Two-Minute Drill - Mike Lupica [14]
He wanted to see Chris, but not like this. Certainly not with Jimmy Dolan in the picture.
“Hey, look, it’s the brain,” Jimmy said. “All duded up.”
They were all stopped now, in front of Thayer’s Hardware.
“Hey, guys,” Scott said, trying to ignore Jimmy as usual.
“Hey,” Jeremy said.
Chris didn’t say anything, just kicked some invisible pebble on the sidewalk. Scott couldn’t believe Chris would be hanging out with Jimmy. Maybe he’d just run into the other guys at the video store.
Scott said to Chris, “I was going to give you a shout-out later.”
Jimmy said, “You been hanging out with the brain, Conlan? What for—you need help with your homework?”
Scott thought, Of all the things in the whole world this dope could have said, he had to say that.
Chris looked over Scott’s head, down Main Street, and said, “I don’t need any help from the brain to do my homework.”
Scott felt as if all the air had gone out of him, like a ball with a hole in it.
Before anybody else could say anything, Chris said, “I gotta go. My mom’s picking me up in front of Lou’s.”
A diner at the other end of Main.
“We’ll go with you,” Jimmy Dolan said. “See you around, brain.”
He laughed then, as if he’d cracked himself up.
Scott stayed right where he was, didn’t turn to watch them go, didn’t care about the sound of Jimmy’s laughter, which to Scott was always the same as a fingernail being scratched across a blackboard.
The only thing he could really hear—still—was Chris calling him “the brain.”
He didn’t turn around until he was sure they were gone. Then he walked slowly back to the New Paradise Café, hoping his parents were ready to go home.
Because he was.
Casey was waiting for him, the way he always was.
He was waiting right behind the front door, spinning around in excitement, acting as if Scott had been away forever.
At least Casey never let him down.
Scott ran upstairs, changed into his play clothes as fast as he could, grabbed his football. When Casey saw the ball, he immediately ran through the kitchen and to the back door, barking all over again, kept barking all the way through the woods until they were back out on Parry Field.
It seemed like more than just a day since Scott and Chris had been out here.
More than that, it seemed to Scott that he was right back where he started.
Him and Case.
Alone.
He should have known it wasn’t going to last with Chris Conlan, no matter what Chris had said about them having dogs in common. No matter what he’d said about Scott having heart.
When Scott got close enough to the goalposts, he fired a pass as hard as he could at the tire.
Missed by a mile.
Casey didn’t care. He chased after the ball like this was their regular game on a regular day, as if nothing had changed, even though Scott felt as if everything had changed.
Even if he couldn’t figure out why.
Chris had acted in town as if Scott was the one who had done something, when all Scott had done the day before was listen. How was listening somebody’s fault?
In town it was like he and Chris hardly knew each other, as if it had been somebody else who stuck up for him with Jimmy Dolan at the bus that day, somebody else pushing Scott to go out for football and then hang in there, no matter what, so he could make a team for the first time in his life.
Now it was a team he didn’t even want to be on anymore.
He was better off here.
Scott kept throwing the ball, managed eventually to put a couple through the tire, Casey always bringing the ball back for another try. Then it was time for Scott to start kicking, first off the tee, then some dropkicks.
For some reason, even though that big heart Chris had talked about wasn’t really in it, he couldn’t miss with his dropkicks today.
He was on fire.
He hardly ever made a lot of dropkicks in a row, mostly because all you had to do was be a little off dropping the ball to throw everything off.
You could miss your spot. Or the ball would land crooked. Stuff like that.
Today he had made six in a row.
He wasn’t just money today. He was cash. That’s what his dad would say when